Teachers talk, a lot. Often times, we do all of the talking in our classrooms. This is not conducive to learning. The more opportunities we give our students to participate in discussion, the more likely they are to truly engage in the learning. There are many learning structures that attempt to engage the whole class in the discussion, but my favorite is student podcasting.
Podcasting is often looked at as an end of unit project, but with the tools and devices we have at our disposal, daily podcasting to document learning is an easy task. In my classroom, we used podcasts as our discussion during literature circles. You've probably seen or facilitated literature circles before, but a short description of how mine looked and why podcasting was the solution may help. Students were placed in groups of four to read a high quality novel. Often times there would be three or four different books being read across varying reading levels. Students had two responsibilities every day. They were expected to read the assigned section and complete a job. These were the possible jobs:
Not all jobs would be chosen, but discussion director had to be taken each day. During the next class period, groups got together and shared their jobs. The goal was for true, engaging, deep, and meaningful discussion to happen. And it did! But only occasionally. I found that my classroom management skills, while serviceable, could not maintain consistently high expectations for six different groups at once. I couldn't focus on the group I was with and the kids only wanted to finish the discussion so they could read the next section in the book. Which I was happy about, but still wanted that rich discussion to happen. I struggled through literature circles like this for three years before finally giving podcasting a shot. I found an iPad app called Opinion that made it easy for students to record a podcast and share it with me. So I pitched it to my students that fourth year of teaching. I laid out literature circles as in past years, but added the twist that they would be CREATING something during this discussion, rather than just going through the motions of a discussion they know their teacher can't hear just to check it off the list. Some observations about the difference it made:
A year removed from the classroom and I'm still reflecting back on the impact this made in my classroom. Here are a few more notes for implementing this in your room:
Tools to use for this:
It's really not about the tool, it is about the learning that happens when students are allowed to design the questions, lead the discussion, and create something they're proud of together.
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AuthorKyle McClure is an Integration Specialist in Buhler, KS. He specializes in iPads and GSuite for education. Archives
November 2018
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